I am relaunching my blog and thought I would repost some previous blogs by topic.  I have two blog exchanges on the academic job market in 2012 and 2013 that are hopefully still relevant.

First, I blogged on political science job market candidates during the 2012-2013 political science job market.  As the Director of Graduate Studies at Washington University I had a bunch of undergrad RAs collect data on candidates from some of the top programs.  Post are here, here, here, here, and here.

I had the students collect this data because it was an easy way to get a snapshot of the job market candidates.  But don’t interpret this data collection as my belief that this simulates how academic search committees actually make decisions.  But I did interview a few search chairs as part of this process.  I am considering a follow-up survey to search chairs.  We’ll see.

Second, there was a little exchange on academic job talks that included a lot of interesting posts by political scientists.  This is less job candidate centered and more about how much weight should be given to talks by committees and departments.  See here, here, and here.

Going back through this post I wonder why I defended the job talk.  I think many departments weigh this too much, especially for senior hires.